Raymond Wolters


Raymond Reilly Wolters is an American historian. He is the Thomas Muncy Keith Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware, where he taught from 1965 until his retirement in 2014. In 1985, his book The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel award, a decision that proved controversial because the book was accused of being racist. In 2017, after reviewing the book Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits in the American Historical Review, Wolters came under renewed criticism over his past writings for the white nationalist outlets, such as the magazine American Renaissance and think tank National Policy Institute. Many critics wrote letters to the AHR harshly criticizing its decision to publish Wolters' review of the book and calling for the review to be retracted. The interim editor of the AHR, Robert Schneider, subsequently issued an apology for publishing Wolters' review, stating that "The AHR deeply regrets both the choice of the reviewer and aspects of the review itself."